REGION Saving historic houses in MetroWest, Milford area from the bulldozer

Sunday

Jul 27, 2014 at 5:24 PMJul 28, 2014 at 1:51 PM

By Chris BergeronDaily News Service

FRANKLIN - Anyone looking for Horace Mann’s childhood home in Franklin will have to settle for a bronze plaque on East Central Street in front of a busy plaza.Deborah Pellegri, who chairs the town’s Historical Commission, believes the 18th century home of the "father of American public education" was torn down in the 1950s long before Franklin adopted a demolition delay law or established historic districts to preserve significant properties."If we had the bylaw back then, maybe we could have saved a historic house where one of our most famous residents lived,’’ said Pellegri, who has served 30 years as town clerk.Since the oldest house in Dover was recently demolished after years of seesaw negotiations and one of Southborough’s oldest houses hangs in the balance, officials and preservationists across MetroWest are reaffirming the value of bylaws that help them to protect historic buildings from the bulldozer, at least temporarily, in some cases.Southborough officials are trying to save the 175-year-old Burnett house on Main Street but have no demolition delay law or historic districts that might give them time or some control over the site’s disposition.Planning Board chairman Donald Morris recalled efforts to create a historic district that would have required property owners to conform to bylaws regulating homes’ external appearance were rejected by Town Meeting, respectively, 10 years ago and in the 1960s.He believes many home owners are comfortable with the status quo and worry changes might restrict their rights.While insisting on the Planning Board’s "neutrality,’’ he has considered proposing an "incentive-based" historic district that would provide tax relief to homeowners who followed recommendations about external features but preserved their right to do as they pleased.After 13 years as town planner, Larry Dunkin said Milford also has neither demolition delay laws nor historic districts though "both have been discussed in the past but didn’t go anywhere.’’He’d said he’d "love to have both’’ but most residents seem comfortable with the mix of protection and freedom provided by "normal zoning’’ and worry about ceding any control over their property. "It’s a typical concern’’ he said. "I’m not sure how well-founded it is.’’Dunkin said Milford could adopt bylaws that reflect public sentiment without being as restrictive as places like Nantucket. "There’s a whole gamut of possibilities,’’ he said.Gerald Couto, an architect who chairs Framingham’s Historic Districts Commission, credits Town Meeting’s adoption of three historic districts with preserving buildings around the Centre Commons and Salem End Road that represent the community’s heritage.While the current demolition delay law gives the Historical Commission from a year to six months to consider whether 50-year-old buildings have significant historic value before they’re destroyed, he said that group is expected to propose Town Meeting push the criteria back to 75 years. "There’s a feeling it’s presently too restrictive because we’ve come to a time when it applies to homes built in the 1960s,’’ said Couto.He said the HDC will ask Town Meeting to add three commercial buildings and five residences to an existing historic district that would require them to conform to bylaws regulating external changes.But Couto stressed the commission only recommended buildings whose owners "are in accordance’’ with the proposal.Though there are several historic buildings in Wayland, Elisa Scola, who chairs the Historical Commission, said Town Meeting rejected a proposed demolition delay bylaw about 10 years ago."We’ll try again but I’m not sure when,’’ she said. "There hasn’t been a movement for it but people say we need it.’’While Wayland has two designated historic districts in the town center and Bow Road, Scola said a demolition delay law would give the commission "breathing room’’ to consider alternatives to demolishing buildings that might have significance.Gretchen Schuler, a preservation consultant who chairs Wayland’s Historic District Commission, said the opponents of a proposed demolition delay bylaw used "scare tactics’’ to frighten homeowners to believe they would be losing their rights to sell or develop their property if it passed.She stressed such laws don’t "forever prevent’’ a property from being demolished but give the Historical Commission time to "find other solutions,’’ like buying or moving a property or removing significant architectural items if granted permission.Schuler would like to see a bylaw passed giving the Historic Commission a year to seek alternatives to destroying a building because developers, who have long-term plans, "don’t flinch’’ from the prospect of a 6-month delay.Rather than limiting owners’ right, she said such bylaws "actually add value to properties’’ by encouraging preservation of their significant features.In Dover, preservationists Amy Wilcox and Sara Molyneaux are mourning the July 14 razing of the Joseph Draper house, the town’s oldest house on its original site, after nine years of fruitless negotiations with the owners.Unlike Southborough, Dover has a demolition delay bylaw from 1996 that gave the Historical Commission a year to find alternatives to tearing down the 290-year Colonial-era property. After the house went through a review in 2004, the owners were legally free to dispose of it as they chose.A group organized by Molyneaux, Friends of the Joseph Draper House, raised $50,000 from donations and thought they had an agreement to take it apart and move it to another site for later reassembling. But that, too, fell through with little explanation, she said.Asked why the owners should be expected to make any concessions to public sentiment, Molyneaux said people who buy historically significant properties should understand they have value to the entire community."Most countries have binding rules that prohibit properties of clear and concrete historic and cultural value from being destroyed,’’ she said. "People who buy such properties should know what they’re getting into.’’While convincing Town Meeting to approve a historic district can "be really challenging,’’ Molyneaux said the demolition of the Draper House just might have convinced residents it’s time to act.Wilcox said the house’s demolition was especially disheartening because "its real value was cultural and in the end, everybody lost.’’"Honestly, saving it was completely doable. The town lost its oldest, most beautiful house,’’ she said. "But if the property owner doesn’t see anything but financial value then our history is lost."Chris Bergeron is a Daily News staff writer. Contact him at cbergeron@wickedlocal.com or 508-626-4448. Follow us on Twitter @WickedLocalArts and on Facebook.